OK, first off a true confession. I hate it when some wise acre analyst acts like they are so smart and that everyone else is an idiot. Its offensive and off-putting – not to mention arrogant. And still in this case, all I can say is “Hi, my name is Jay.”
A lot of attention has been paid lately to the fact that AAPL is essentially swallowing up the whole world in terms of market capitalization. As you can see in Figure 1, no single S&P 500 Index stock has ever had a higher market cap relative to the market cap of the entire Russell 2000 small-cap index.
Figure 1 – Largest S&P 500 Index stock as a % of entire Russell 200 Index (Courtesy Sentimentrader.com)
So of course, the easiest thing in the world to do is to be an offensive, off-putting and arrogant wise acre and say “Well, this can’t last.” There, I said it. With the caveat that I have no idea how far AAPL can run “before the deluge”, as a student of (more) market history (than I care to admit) I cannot ignore this gnawing feeling that this eventually “ends badly.” Of course, I have been wrong plenty of times before and maybe things (Offensive, Off-Putting and Arrogant Trigger Warning!) “really will be different this time around.” To get a sense of why I bring this all up, please keep reading.
In Figure 1 we also see some previous instances of a stock becoming “really large” in terms of market cap. Let’s take a closer look at these instances.
IBM – 1979
Figure 2 – IBM (Courtesy AIQ TradingExpert)
MSFT – 1999
Figure 3 – MSFT (Courtesy AIQ TradingExpert)
XOM – 2008
Figure 4 – XOM (Courtesy AIQ TradingExpert)
AAPL – 2012
Figure 5 – AAPL (Courtesy AIQ TradingExpert)
AAPL – 2020
Figure 6 – AAPL (Courtesy AIQ TradingExpert)
Summary
Small sample size? Yes.
Could AAPL continue to run to much higher levels? Absolutely
Do I still have that offensive, off-putting and slightly arrogant gut feeling that somewhere along the way AAPL takes a huge whack?
Sorry. It’s just my nature.
See also Jay Kaeppel Interview in July 2020 issue of Technical Analysis of Stocks and Commodities magazine
See also Jay’s “A Strategy You Probably Haven’t Considered” Video
See also Video – The Long-Term…Now More Important Than Ever
Jay Kaeppel
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